The Design of New Catalytic Technologies:
Challenges and Opportunities of the Emerging Clean Fuels and Chemicals Industry
George W Huber
University of Wisconsin
http://biofuels.che.wisc.edu/
Concerns about global warming and national security, combined with the diminishing supply and
increased cost of fossil fuels are causing our society to search for new sources of transportation fuels.
Lignocellulosic biomass, the non-edible portion of biomass including trees, agricultural residues and fast
growing energy crops, is available as a renewable feedstock today. In this presentation we will discuss
different approaches for the production of renewable fuels and chemicals that are being developed both
inside and outside the Huber research group.
The objective of the Huber research group is to develop new catalytic processes and catalytic
materials for the production of renewable fuels and chemicals from biomass, solar energy, and natural gas
resources. We use a wide range of modern chemical engineering tools to design and optimize these clean
technologies including: heterogeneous catalysis, kinetic modeling, reaction engineering, spectroscopy,
analytical chemistry, nanotechnology, catalyst synthesis, conceptual process design, and theoretical
chemistry. We will highlight some of the challenges and future opportunities for future process
development and design of new catalytic approaches. We will show that all the same fuels and chemicals
that are made from petroleum can be made from renewable biomass resources. We will also briefly discuss
the potential of solar fuels (fuels made from sunlight, CO2 and water).
Hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) is a platform technology used to convert liquid biomass feedstocks
(including aqueous carbohydrates, pyrolysis oils, and aqueous enzymatic products) into alkanes, alcohols
and polyols. In this process the biomass feed reacts with hydrogen to produce water and a deoxygenated
product using a bifunctional catalyst that contains both metal and acid sites. The challenge with HDO is to
selectively produce targeted products that can be used as fuel blendstocks or chemicals and to decrease the
hydrogen consumption. In our talk we will talk about how to design improved catalytic materials and
processes to selective produce both liquid transportation fuels and higher value commodity chemicals from
biomass.
Renewable aromatics and olefins can be produced from biomass by a technology catalytic fast
pyrolysis (CFP). The aromatics can be used as a feedstock to make renewable polymers including
polycarbonates, polyurethanes, polystyrenes, and polyethylene terephthalates. CFP involves the direct
production of aromatics from biomass in a single catalytic step. Solid biomass is fed into a fluidized bed
reactor where the solid biomass thermally decomposes. The biomass vapors enter a zeolite catalyst where
a series of dehydration, decarbonylation and oligomerization reactions occur to form aromatics, olefins,
CO, CO2, coke and water. Coke is formed from homogeneous decomposition reactions or catalytic reactions
inside the zeolite. Fundamental catalytic studies with model compounds combined with in-situ and
temperature programmed techniques have aided in the design of improved zeolite catalysts for CFP.
We believe that new catalytic conversion technologies have a tremendous potential for the
production of renewable fuels and chemicals. As will be demonstrated in this presentation chemistry,
chemical catalysis and chemical engineering are critical 21st century needs to help make renewable energy
a practical reality.